EDUCATION Secretary Michael Gove has paid tribute to a campaign to rebuild the Duchess's Community High School in Alnwick - but refused to guarantee its success.
He told The Journal there were “few schools where more effort has been invested” in terms of putting forward the need for investment by the local community and praised the “very effective” lobbying of local MP Sir Alan Beith. But as Northumberland County Council finalises a bid for the school to access a £2bn rebuilding programme, Mr Gove said that “no area is a priority case” and that proposals would be judged fairly.
Last year, the Tory Education Secretary visited Duchess High School – praising it as “great” while describing the buildings as “some of the worst” he had seen.
In a further development, Mr Gove also declined to comment on key details of the £2bn rebuilding programme being established by the coalition after it axed Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.
The new scheme will be a private finance initiative and the minister declined to set out where the bill would ultimately fall – on headteachers managing constrained budgets, councils or his own Whitehall department.
The programme will cover between 100 and 300 schools with the first opening in September 2014 and is expected to be worth around £2bn in upfront construction costs. Bids must be submitted by October 14.
Mr Gove said: “I have seen with my own eyes the situation there. We are going to have to score the Duchess High School against other schools, which are in need.
“But Sir Alan has been lobbying officials and ministers here for quite some time and very effectively.”
He added: “I cannot pre-empt that decision. But what I can say is that there are few schools where more effort has been invested by the local MP, by the local community and the local authority in making the case for appropriate capital to make sure facilities are up to spec.”
Headteacher Maurice Hall hoped funding for rebuilding work would be secured, saying the Government’s scheme was more closely related to absolute conditions rather than other socio-economic issues and bad exam results.
“We would hope that we have more potential success in getting into that programme than in previous years,” he said.
Ian Walker, chairman of the governors, said: “I’d be hopeful. Most people, including Mr Gove have said that the conditions are definitely unsuitable.
“But it would depend on how that looks against all other applications across the country.”
Sir Alan Beith said: “A lot of hard work is going into proposals which can fit with the Government’s more focussed scheme for school rebuilding projects. And I am in regular contact with Michael Gove about this.”
